at the sight of the ghastly
relics;--again he saw the shadowy hand from the cloud--again heard the
voice murmuring: "Lo, the star that shone on the birth of the victor;"
again he heard the words of Hilda interpreting the dream--again the
chaunt which the dead or the fiend had poured from the rigid lips of the
Vala. It boomed on his ear; hollow as a death bell it knelled through
the roar of battle--

"Never
Crown and brow shall Force dissever,
Till the dead men, unforgiving,
Loose the war-steeds on the living;
Till a sun whose race is ending
Sees the rival stars contending,
Where the dead men, unforgiving,
Wheel their war-steeds round the living!"

Faded the vision, and died the chaunt, as a breath that dims, and
vanishes from, the mirror of steel. The breath was gone--the firm steel
was bright once more; and suddenly the King was recalled to the sense of
the present hour, by shouts and cries, in which the yell of Norman
triumph predominated, at the further end of the field. The signal words
to Fitzosborne had conveyed to that chief the order for the mock charge
on the Saxon vanguard, to be followed by the feigned flight; and so
artfully had this stratagem been practised, that despite all the solemn
orders of Harold, despite even the warning cry of Leofwine, who, rash and
gay-hearted though he was, had yet a captain's skill--the bold English,
their blood heated by long contest and seeming victory, could not resist
pursuit. They rushed forward impetuously, breaking the order of their
hitherto indomitable phalanx, and the more eagerly because the Normans
had unwittingly taken their way towards a part of the ground concealing
dykes and ditches, into which the English trusted to precipitate the foe.
It was as William's knights retreated from the breastworks that this
fatal error was committed: and pointing toward the disordered Saxons with
a wild laugh of revengeful joy, William set spurs to his horse, and,
followed by all his chivalry, joined the cavalry of Poitou and Boulogne
in their swoop upon the scattered array. Already the Norman infantry had
turned round--already the horses, that lay in ambush amongst the
brushwood near the dykes, had thundered forth. The whole of the late
impregnable vanguard was broken up, divided corps from corps,--hemmed in;
horse after horse charging to the rear, to the front, to the flank, to
the right, to the left.

Gurth,